Fiddling With Daily Listening

You can actively build mental models of songs through daily listening. It’s a way to practice without your instrument. Doing this allows you to learn tunes more quickly. But more important than that, with daily listening, your music will sound more like music. You’ll naturally add more feeling and expression when you listen.

Steven King in his book On Writing simplifies the process of writing in two steps:

1. Read every day
2. Write every day

We can adapt that to music practice:

1. Listen every day
2. Play every day

Practice both passive and active listening.

Passive Daily Listening

Passive listening is how most people listen to music. Put on music in the background while you do something else.

Activities to merge with listening:

• Driving to work
• Washing dishes
• Walking the dog
• Exercise
• Socializing, gatherings

Your brain is still learning even though you’re not giving it your full attention. This is called “perceptual exposure.” Listening to different high-quality versions of the same tune helps the brain to find patterns.

This helps you to move new songs along the “practice pipeline” from “Can’t do yet” to “Can do with effort”. And from “Can do with effort” to “Can to with flow.”

Active Daily Listening

Active listening means you give your full attention to listening. Do nothing else but listen.

Hum or sing along with the recording. If there’s a part that you can’t get, then listen to just that. This is deliberate practice.

A next-level practice is audiation. Listen to a part of a tune, then stop the recording and see if you can “hear it in your head.”

Ask questions as you listen.

• Where is there repetition? Look for repeating parts, phrases, rhythms and lyrics.
• What is the form? AABB? AABA? ABC?
• What’s the hardest part?

If you’re trying to learn note-reading, then listen to a tune while looking at the sheet music. I call this “Intuitive Note-reading.” Without even knowing the rules of notation, your brain will start to pick up on patterns.

Tips

Create Practice Playlists on whatever music app you use (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) This way you can easily review what you’re currently learning.

Some ideas for playlists

• Current songs (this month’s practice)
• Master song list
• Songs to learn
• Genres (Irish, Cajun, etc.)

If you’re use Spotify, check out my Master Practice List playlist and my February 2023 Playlist.

Use Speed-changing apps like the Amazing Slowdowner, Anytune or Moises. These allow you to more clearly hear fast parts of a song. Of course, you can use these when you pick up your instrument to practice the song.

Listen before bed. Studies show that retention of information and learning goes up when you practice just before sleep.